Tuesday, March 8, 2016

SNCF: a hole of 12 billion euros, while sales rose – Le Parisien

The SNCF has taken into account on the basis of a simulation, that will be worth the company’s assets in 15 years. According to the auditors, the assets of SNCF Mobility, which is responsible for circulating the TGV, were revised downwards to 2.2 billion euros. According to the station, this is because “half by traffic forecasting declines due to rising competition from other modes of transportation such as carpooling, low cost air or bus,” but also by setting in service of the next train line between Tours and Bordeaux should be in deficit. In addition, to cope with competition, SNCF has opted not to raise average fares of train tickets “leisure” in the coming years, which represents a loss of income.

This impairment is even stronger for rail infrastructure. There, the SNCF said it took into account the difficult economic context that should have an impact on the number of trains in circulation and smaller returns on royalties paid by the railways to operate trains on the network. So, the value will lose 9.6 billion euros from 43 billion euros to 33 billion euros in 15 years.

Finally, the value of the stations has been revised down to 450 million euros.

However, the boss Guillaume Pepy SNCF is reassuring, affirming that these valuation changes have nothing to do with the health of the company. “This has no impact on either our development or on the TGV material of the future,” he says in “Les Echos”.

The group recorded a net operating profit of 377 million euros for 2015. “We have benefited from growth in our sales of 5% thanks to the development of the activity International Geodis, Keolis and Systra, “he adds. Another area of ​​satisfaction, the cargo business in the red for years, has been reduced to € 46 million, or a loss divided by four since 2010. Finally, the TGV traffic is also rising again (0, 5%) in 2015.